WhatsApp Video Claiming An Alien Caught At Karnataka-Kerala Border Gone Viral. But Here’s The Real Story

A video of a strange-looking beast like creature(dubbed as an alien) clutching at the metal cage went viral in Bengaluru on Thursday. The video uploaded on YouTube soon began to be widely shared on WhatsApp and other social media networks.

very unseen strange creature found at Kerala Karnataka border on 30 Nov 2016 . This is not funny. Caught in Kerala Karnataka border. It had been eating all animals including humans. Total 4 reported and only 1 caught. Please be safe during the travel through jungle and palm trees. This is not a graphics. Source from authenticated (sic)

Now, here’s the real story.

After a cursory search on internet it was found that the video and photographs are that of a diseased sun bear that residents of Borneo, Malaysia, came across in January last year. There too, locals thought it was an “alien” and some had even pelted it with stones. A healthy sun bear has a lush dark fur with a honey-coloured patch around its neck.

Malaysian media had reported that the diseased sun bear was captured (and that was the image which was doing the rounds on Thursday) and the authorities were nursing it back to health.

But on Thursday, many Bengalureans were taken in by the pictures and widely shared them without checking the authenticity – a big problem since most people tend to believe “news” they see on Facebook feeds, Twitter timelines or WhatsApp forwards.